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Peter Reinhart

Meteil (less than 50%) rye baked as a “hearth” (not in a pan) loaf with caraway and onion flake.

The key? Spraying the crust with water at 2 minute intervals for the first 6 minutes (aka: 4 total sprayings,1 as it first goes in) to produce significant crunch.

Also, I stopped punching down to achieve a second rise before panning. I seem to have been exhausting the levin and thus creating dense final loaves with little to no oven spring.

Additional final adjustment was realizing that I was working so hard to make the dough not be “messy” that I was working in too much flour which (a) taxed the levin too much and (b) reduced available moisture to out-gas steam during baking.

Crust on the very brink of burning ends up with deep flavor and crunch

By foregoing a second rise and relying on the flavor development from the slow fermentation pre-dough portions, a much lighter crumb is possible

I was going to do this pictures again, but as it turned out, they’re all incredibly boring. Just small bowls of pale dough with a few bubbles here and there.

But, I can tell you that the method Peter Reinhart advocates in his whole grain bread book, the one developed by Debra Wink of the King Arthur Baking Circle, does work, even if you’re a bit of a ham handed improviser rather than a proper baker.

After five days I now have a 200 gram wad of spongey, bubbling mush which, if portioned out correctly, will never stop making wonderful bread.

I really do highly recommend this book. The results are fantastic and I’ve only just scratched the surface on these recipes.

My wild yeast starter is behaving much better* The rye seigle was a bit sweet for my taste, so I left the honey out of the recipe for the whole wheat hearth. This recipe came together more or less effortlessly and the result is delicious.

A story in photos:

whole wheat soaker, Friday night

whole wheat starter, Saturday morning

soaker, Saturday evening

starter, Saturday evening

soaker, epoxy ready

starter, epoxy added

commercial yeast, final booster

smooth combination

get a sense of how it feels

rest until doubled

Do Not Punch Down or De-gas at this Point !!!

form a batard

bake until deep brown

gorgeous texture

* It is behaving so well, it bubbles and grows in the refrigerator !!!

A seigle is a loaf that is more than 50% rye. This is going to be a tale told mostly in photos,

whole wheat mother starter

soaker, Sunday night

pre-ferment, Monday morning

yeast, molasses, honey

epoxy method

kneading

one hour of rising

punched down

waiting to rise again

panned as a batard

a good start

flattened a bit

looks like bread

a bit dense, but very tasty

So, the wild yeast starter I borrowed was mixed to a very different formula from Peter Reinhart’s and as a consequence, my pre-ferment didn’t rise and grow over the course of the day as it should. Thus, there was a struggle to get some levin action during the final mixing and the final dough is a bit dense and a bit too moist. But as a first attempt at very serious whole grain baking, I feel good about the results.

The good news is that I refreshed the mother over night and it is now very (very) active* so future loaves should be much less of a clutch effort.

* In fact, it may or may not have exploded all over the inside of a cabinet over night.

The aspects of my personality that make me a good improvisational cook (the premise of this blog up to this point) are also the aspects of my personality that make me pretty terrible at following precise instructions — which is what baking requires. I always want to fiddle, tweak, exchange, approximate… and that doesn’t create consistent results.

But life often creates moments to learn that sometimes a challenge is the very thing we need to learn some balance.

I’m spending a few weeks visiting family for the long holiday season, and this happened to coincide with my mother discovering flavored balsamic vinegars and infused olive oils. She picked up a sample set of each, and wanted some plain bread for dipping — all the bakery bread in the house wasn’t plain. So, knowing she was very busy, I grabbed a simple French bread recipe from the Food Network website and did my best to stick to the book to produce a couple loves of plain white bread.

The results were shockingly good.

She intended to host a holiday dinner this past Saturday evening, and so with some minor tweaks I turned out some very nice herb infused loaves for the occasion.

Meanwhile, I’d been reading Peter Reinhart’s “Whole Grain Breads”. Why? The truth of the matter is, I don’t eat very much bread. I don’t keep any in the house day to day. Yes, I have sandwiches or burgers if I’m out and about, yes I like pita when I’m at my favorite Lebanese cafe, but I’m certainly not a dinner roll kind of guy nor a morning toast guy. I tend to think of bread as “empty starch” calories and while I do exercise a fair bit, I don’t enjoy exercising enough to tip the cost/benefit scale of enjoying the eating of bread every day. But, if I could start making a whole grain loaf at home, especially if I could make it vegan so that I could even eat it during Lent, then perhaps I could be getting some additional fiber and vitamins into my diet while also filling some of my time with an ancient human activity.

And I have to say, the idea of having bread to give to people has been rattling around in my head for some years now. So, motivation for this project has been unexpected, swift, and definitive.

In the interest of time, my mom acquired some wild yeast starter from a friend, and yesterday we picked up bags of whole wheat and rye flours. Last night a soak of flour and water was established and this morning a portion of the mother was enlarged into a ferment which should spend the day slowly growing (hopefully). Later tonight, they will come together and be baked into a whole grain rye loaf. If all goes well.

When I get back to Houston, I’ll be growing a mother from scratch (assuming I can’t figure out how to get this one home intact) and continuing on my bread baking journey. I’ll be posting here with photos and updates — but not recipes as for now they’re coming from Peter’s book, which I paid for, and I don’t think he wants me giving them away for free.